Easter

Just Born continues with their Peeps limited edition flavors. This season they’ve released three new Delight versions which are fruity flavors dipped in a white confection tinted and flavored to match.

I found two varieties and picked them up: Raspberry Delight and Lemon Delight Peeps.

The Raspberry Delight Peeps package shows both red and blackberries, though the description isn’t any more specific than simply raspberry.

The face that the inside and the outside of the Peeps are color-coordinated is oddly unsettling. The sugar crust is sparkly and a rather vibrant purple, but the innards are oddly dead looking.

The texture is exactly what you expect with a Peep, a crusty sugar shell, a light flavor and bouncy marshmallow texture. I actually enjoy slightly stale Peeps, so I let these packages sit open for a week after taking the photos of them. (So I ate one in its fresh state and the others in their stale state.) The raspberry is very mild, floral and a little jammy. There are little sour crystals in the crust and maybe in the fudge. The fudge is sweet, but also lots more flavorful than the marshmallow. I can’t say that I liked it, but it did add a textural difference and a little creamy note to the whole thing.

In this instance I liked this better than the Candy Corn and Pumpkin Spice Peeps, but not by much.

The lemon flavor is mostly sweet and has a “cleaning product” sort of vibe, with the light citrus scent but very little nuance. The flavor also has a few hints of salt and sour, which does give a little respite from the sugary notes. Overall, they’re perfectly edible, but the fudge element is grainy and sweet and waxy.

The Lemon didn’t work as well as the Raspberry, but still came off as a decent piece of candy. I find these little dipped Peeps to be ridiculously expensive for the type of candy they are. I buy them because they’re novelties and there weren’t many other new Easter candies this year. In the future, I’d prefer to just find a good small confectioner that makes their marshmallow in house and uses high quality, high cacao chocolate.

See’s is on trend this year with their new seasonal Lollypop variety, Strawberry Cream Lollypops.

The pop smells mostly of butter, but vaguely like strawberry as well.

The blocky shape isn’t the best for comfort, but it’s certainly a generous amount for a lollipop. For the most part the dissolve of the See’s pops is smooth. It’s more like a hard caramel consistency than a hard candy. The candy isn’t aerated, so there are fewer voids which makes for a creamy experience and a little slower melt.

The strawberry flavor here is very mild. I was expecting something similar to a strawberry ice cream flavor, mostly the sweetness mixed with milk and maybe a little jammy note. There’s no hint of either a fruity tartness or yogurt tang. It’s all sweetness, though not cloying or throat searing. The strawberry has a very slight boiled berry note but mostly it’s the floral scent.

The lollypop is merely pleasant. It didn’t think it’s vivid enough or, if that’s not its intent, creamy enough. I ate all three that I bought, but I’ll switch back to the standards or wait for the exceptional Root Beer to return.

Mars has a few seasonal varieties of M&Ms available this year, including the White Strawberry Shortcake and Easter Sundae M&Ms (which are Target and Walmart exclusives, respectively). For the masses who can’t shop at those stores or don’t want a which chocolate product, there’s one other Easter version that’s new this year: Malt M&Ms Mini Eggs.

I was very excited about these by the name, since Mars already has a great line of malt products available in Europe under the Malteser name. This is not that, in any way.

The new Malt M&Ms Mini Eggs are Crispy M&Ms in their format and ingredients. The only difference is not the addition of malt in the center, but butter flavor.

I picked up both the regular M&Ms Crispy in their Easter colors and the Malt M&Ms Mini Eggs for comparison, when a reader alerted me that they were no different.

There are some small format differences. As noted in the name, the Malts are mini, and they are slightly smaller than the regular Crispy M&Ms, but not something that you’d notice right away. But then again, the Malts aren’t really egg shaped at all, they’re just inconsistent so that some of them are kind of egg shaped and others are spherical.

The candies on the left are the Easter colors for the regular Crispy M&Ms and the handful on the right are the new Malt M&Ms Mini Eggs. Slightly different colors, but similar irregular shapes.

The difference isn’t inside, either. The ingredients and the structure are the same. The crispy rice center is light and airy, but basically flavorless, it’s a little like cereal, a little malty. Outside there’s a little hint of chocolate, not much but with a bit of a milky note. The candy shell is crisp. But as I mentioned earlier, this Malt version is not malty, the outside has a butter flavor to it, and I have to emphasize that it’s just a flavor.

I’ve had these two bags for almost a month, I’ve finished the regular Easter crispy M&Ms but I can’t bear to even have the Malt bag open near me. The smell is disgustingly artificial. It’s not malt at all. I don’t know what Mars was thinking with this product version, but they should definitely consult with other parts of the company that actually make malted items in the future.

Easter is a special time in the candy cycle, because it’s really the only time of year that white chocolate is embraced. Fortunately there are some products that are actually good, not just a white confection but actually made with real cocoa butter and lots of milk. (Many white confections are just sugar and tropical oils.)

The new White Strawberry Shortcake M&Ms are a Target exclusive this year, and if you’re a fan of the other white chocolate holiday versions like the Candy Corn M&Ms and the White Peppermint M&Ms, these may be just for you.

The pieces are larger than standard M&Ms, they’re puffier and a little less regular. They’re delicate pastel colors in pleasing creamy pink, eggshell and white, kind of like a strawberry shortcake with a whipped cream dollop. That’s about as far as the shortcake theme goes, which is fine with me. (The Dove Strawberry Shortcake Crisp things were weird.)

The package this year holds 8 ounces. Years ago the limited edition flavors came in a 9.9 ounce bag, they’re reliably shrinking over time.

The pieces are uncolored in the center and not layered like some. The white chocolate is creamy and sweet and has the floral flavor of fresh strawberries. There are no dried strawberry bits in there, like some previous products have included.

The shell is crunchy and the center is sweet but balanced with the more milky flavors. There’s a lot of fat in there, from the cocoa butter, but they didn’t have a greasy texture. (But that could be that it’s kind of chilly, the Candy Corn version they make in the fall comes along when things are still warm in my area, and the cocoa butter can migrate through the shell in the heat. The flavor in this case reminds me quite a bit of the old Nestle Qwik strawberry milk.

I’m keen on these, but they push all my buttons. They’re pretty and not overly colored, they have a good flavor that’s not too artificial and the ingredients (though there are artificial colors and flavors) are petty decent. I hope they return next year with a wider release.

Easter is a time for the iconic Cadbury Creme Egg. However, it doesn’t come in a lot of flavor variations. So it’s understandable that someone else wants to get into the cream egg marketplace.

I found these Minion Milk Chocolate with Banana Cream Egg at Cost Plus World Market. It was hard to find out who actually makes them, because it’s not Cadbury. The foil wrapper was hard to read, but eventually I was able to flatten it out to see that it’s made by a company called Treat Street, that mostly makes licensed novelty treats.

It’s a great idea, to make a cream egg with a different flavored filling, and in this case it’s brilliant that they’ve picked banana and partnered that with a Minion themed foil wrapping. They’re quite arresting when viewed in the full bin. But the most notable part of this design is that all of the eggs are Stuart, as they all have one eye (I suppose they could also be other one-eyed Minions, but it’d be silly to pay a licensing fee to make candies with a minor character).

My issue with only one design is minor, because the foil itself is quite adorable. The egg inside is completely ordinary looking. It’s the same as a Cadbury egg, except it’s missing a starburst.

The banana center is very yellow, in fact, one might call it Minion Yellow. Before biting the egg just smells like milky chocolate. After biting, well, it’s all banana. The filling is gooey, a little bit thinner than the Cadbury variety and a little less grainy. It is absolutely sweet and has a strong artificial banana flavor, though it’s also a little on the green side. Some banana flavors can have a lot of acetone notes, this one at least seems a little bit more unripe.

The most disappointing part of the egg construction is that there is not one cream compartment in the center. In the case of these knock off eggs, they’re obviously made in halves which actually have a full coating of chocolate that creates a chocolate septum when biting into the whole egg. This means more chocolate and less filling. It also means that there’s no “yolk”. Though the filling is extremely sweet and quite strongly flavored, there’s so much chocolate to balance it.

As far as a knock-off egg, this one is very good. The chocolate is passably good for a novelty item and the filling is distinctive. Since it adds its own twist with the banana as well as the foil design to go with the Minion character, I’d call it a win. However, I can’t imagine ever buying this unless I was specifically looking for a banana Easter item or something for a Minion fan. The price of $1.49 was a bit steep as well for the quality level.

I’m a big fan of Malted Milk Balls and consider the candy coated Pastel Malted Milk Egg to be one of the best holiday candy creations ever. Brach’s has been making a pastel egg for at least 55 years, and malted milk balls for even longer.

Though the Brach’s brand has been around for over 110 years, they’ve changed ownership, leadership and product focus dozens of times. This means that the products themselves also change. The changes can be for consumer-driven reasons, supply issues and costs. I’ve noticed, since Candy Blog is coming up on 10 years, that the Brach’s Fiesta Eggs have changed quite a bit over the years, and have some photos and notes to document it.

Name: Malted Milk Pastel Fiesta Eggs
Brand: Brach’s (Ferrara Candy)
Size: 7.5 ounces
Price: $2.50
Rating: 5 out of 10
Shell: Pastel. It’s crisp and has the texture of actual egg shells, a little bit of crumble, generally flavorless.
Chocolate: It’s passable stuff. It’s real chocolate, but not great quality. The texture is fatty and smooth, but also extremely sweet, there’s very little cocoa flavor to it.
Malted Milk Center: The texture is very dense, with a lot of milky notes but less malt than the others. It’s not overly sweet and not overtly salty.

The center this year is different. It’s darker in color, which does indicate that the recipe or manufacturing process has changed. The colors are great, I like the shell, though many commenters do not like the new version. I can’t put my finger on what’s wrong here, except that I don’t plan on buying them again, but I’ll finish the bags I have.

Candyology 101 - Episode 35 - Whatchamacallit
In the latest Candyology 101 podcast, Maria and I tackled a little-celebrated candy bar, the Whatchamacallit. We’re also trying out a new format, which is a little shorter, like a handful of fun size candy bars! (more)

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All content (text and photos unless otherwise credited) is copyright 2005-2016 by Cybele May

Please do not use my photos without prior permission directly from me, they represent what I ate in preparation for these reviews and are not to be used for other purposes.